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Monday, June 30, 2014

One of Calidar’s objectives is to depict a world whose skies are ruled by flying ships, and whose people yearn to conquer their corner of space. Naturally, I won’t get into too much detail before the book’s release, but I can give a glimpse of skyship design and styling.

Inspired from Earth’s Age of Sail, most human and elven airborne vessels are powered by atmospheric or ethereal wind, at least as regards short distances and battles. The dwarves of Kragdûr rely instead on pressurized, steam-powered vessels. On Calidar, the main races live in close proximity to each other. Some of their skyships combine different technologies relying on wind, magic, and mechanical power. When space travel is involved, each culture exploits a different technique to overcome the vast distances between their worlds.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

I’m pleased to announce that Meryath’s poster map is ready to go to the printer. This one’s story is as long as the Great Caldera’s (see my previous blog articles). The two were developed concurrently, as soon as we had a viable coastal outline. Some of Meryath’s geographical details carried over to the Great Caldera map, while some of latter’s graphic styling, especially the labels’ fonts and color scheme, found its way into Meryath’s poster map after Thorfinn and I settled final cosmetic details.

Monday, June 2, 2014

Dealing with Alfdaín presented the challenge of generating Elvish names without sounding too much like a Tolkien-wannabe. The names used here blend Nordic-sounding syllables, old English/Germanic, and Breton Celtic. I reverted to plain modern English for geographical features, like bays, forests, and mountains. I may yet invent a new language, as I already did for the dwarves. Instilling some rhyme and reason to all these fancy words may be just the thing I’ll do when the time comes to focus on Alfdaín (or Alorea). This parenthetical reference does bring up another issue. While rereading the manuscript, I noticed a curious discrepancy. All accents in Alfdaín names rise toward the right. However, there is the Alorean society called Tòrr-Gàrraidh whose accents rise toward the left. If you’re tending toward OCD, the compulsion is to fix the disturbing detail, immediately nudging all accents to lean the same way. But no-no-no: any OCD predisposition on my side rests backwards and upside-down (especially on even-numbered days). I decided that Alorean accents should aim one way and Alfdaín’s the other, if you get my penchant. The logic behind the offending accents is a form of subtle intellectual mutiny only making sense among elves (and French readers). Elven grammarians on either side will never agree on which is the right way and, if given the opportunity, will probably come to bold words (no doubt appropriately accented) and italic blows over their diverging linguistic standards. The dwarves quietly snicker at the oh-so pedantic conflict. Their accents look like miniature mountains (sans serif), making everyone there ever so smug about their stonelike cultural rectitude.

I
grew up in France (mostly), England, Morocco, Washington DC, and Texas. I speak mostly French and English, with a little Spanish, Portuguese, and German. Returning to Nice for my education, I graduated from the lycée hotelier in 1977; I got passionately interested in wargames when I was attending the Lycée ... primarily in Avalon Hill games like Kriegspiel, Luftwaffe, Third Reich, and Panzer Leader
— the classics. There were, of course, no French editions of these
games at the time, so I had to learn the American versions. I loved to travel, so I studied hotel management and worked as a concierge in both France and California.

While living in San Francisco I discovered the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, and when I returned to Paris I joined my first regular Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) group. I started writing articles on D&D and AD&D for French gaming magazine Casus Belli, and there learned that TSR
was looking for someone to translate the games into French. Well, I
spoke and wrote both languages, and I knew the games, so a request reached Gary Gygax.
By a coincidence, he was just about to come to Paris on business, and
so we set up a meeting. I must have done OK, because he offered me the
job. After a few months of doing translation work in Nice, TSR requested I move to the home office in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. For a sun-loving Mediterranean like me, Wisconsin in February was a bit of a shock.

After working for two years as a translator, I transferred to TSR's Games Division in July
1985 as an Acquisitions Coordinator, in charge of contracting
freelance writers. I also did game design, including adventure
modules CM7, Tree of Life; M1, Into the Maelstrom; and co-authorship of DL12, Dragons of Faith.

I worked on a number of products for the basic Dungeons & Dragons game, including writing the "Voyage of the Princess Ark" series for Dragon magazine, a monthly feature that lasted about three years, as well as other products for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. I was the Basic D&D line Product Manager for years, during which the beloved D&D Gazetteers and the Rules Cyclopedia were published. I also worked at TSR as the director of production planning and head of games acquisitions.

My son Noel came to this world when TSR went bankrupt. One of the outcomes of the happy event in my life was that I could not follow my colleagues to Renton, Wa, at WotC, which had salvaged most of TSR's creative team. My writing years went on hiatus while I explored other avenues. After some time at US Web near Milwaukee and United Airlines at O'Hare, I'm now back in Wisconsin to re-invent myself and do what I really want to do! This now includes the creation of the World of Calidar.